An overtly comical left-wing, anarchist-environmentalist-spiritualist character, with a penchant for tie-dyes, crystals, veganism, free love, oneness with nature and anything that is "all-natural".

This character is not very well grounded, tending to be overly-cheerful and flighty but not scatter-brained enough to qualify as The Ditz. They love alternative medicine and might refer to real doctors as "greedy allopaths," followed by an immediate apology for "being so negative. That's not like me, at all." Sometimes, she is a Straw Feminist or Straw Vegetarian, or something along those lines, though not always.

You can expect either gender to play the guitar, badly. Regardless of gender, they are portrayed as sincere and well-meaning.

Granola Girls (and Guys) tend to be Wide Eyed Idealists or occasional Cloudcuckoolanders, and often end up bringing other characters to follow their way of thinking, usually to solve a conflict or think about a situation from a different perspective.

Examples:

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Advertising

A series of home insurance adverts for UK insurer Direct Line, featuring a potential customer who misses their offers because she's worried about feng shui, or accidentally drops a heavy crystal on the salesman's foot. Occasionally used for Hypocritical Humor, such as the one where she claims not to need insurance because she's moved beyond material goods, and then can't find her handbag.

Customer: It's got all my things in it! It's got all my money!!

Comic Books

Karolina Dean of the Runaways, being the progeny of two movie stars, is this, to a certain degree. She's a vegan and generally prefers to avoid fighting. The team's busy schedule of dealing with criminals, demons, and alien invaders and general lack of money doesn't give her much opportunity to indulge in other granola behaviors, though.

Comic Strips

Dykes to Watch Out For: Most of the main characters (with the distinct exception of Sydney) are distinctly on this end of the spectrum compared to mainstream Middle America, with Sparrow starting off as the most so. Ironically, in the strip's latter days the biggest Granola Girl is the main male character, Stuart.

Sky from Chelsea Boys is a Granola Boy full stop. Vegetarian, idealist, does his yoga every day, raised on a hippie commune in Canada, the list goes on...

Andrea "Andy" Fox from FoxTrot is an exaggerated version of this making things like eggplant brownies.

Fan Works

Terra Caldwell from "Convergent Paths" (a Pokémon fanfic), who dislikes shoes and likes meditating, up to the point of switching between normal state and meditative state (in which she speaks "like a wise elder of a village").

DC Nation: Aurora "Fauna" Andersen is still a left-wing activist for a variety of causes, with her activist work sometimes just as dangerous as her missions as a Titan. She keeps her superheroing a secret because the people she works with disapprove of caped vigilantes.

Films — Live-Action

Chrissie, Sally's ditzy sister in Atlantic City. She thinks that Dave is a reincarnated soul who has had lives going back to ancient Egypt, she thinks that Jesus would be a Hare Krishna if he were still around, she feels no awkwardness over sleeping with her sister's husband, and she has no problem with Dave selling "dope" because "dope belongs to the whole world." When she finds out Dave has been murdered she doesn't mind, because that only means Dave will be reincarnated sooner.

Black Sheep (2007): Experience. She claims to be able to see auras, carries around an aromatherapy candle, and at some point learned something about acupuncture.

Mars Attacks!: Brutally parodied— Annette Bening's character Barbara is a Granola Girl who sets up New Age crystals as she watches the Martians land, believing that they are the saviors of the human race, here to enlighten us. They aren't. She's one of the few people to survive the massacre that follows. Afterward, Barbara claims that they have come to punishhumanity for destroying the Earth.

Max is from California, where people wear tie-dye, play drums, and just love tie-dye! 'Cause California has hippies, and hippies love tie-dye! But the thing about hippies is that hippies actually have sex. Free love is one of the main characteristics of Hippie-dome. But Max is a (thunderclap, dramatic pause, dramatic whisper) virgin!

Played with in The Addams Family. A Girl Scout insists she only eats all-natural, preservative-free foods while debating purchasing some of Wednesday's lemonade... and then offers to sell them highly-processed Girl Scout cookies. Wednesday's priceless rebuttal: "Are they made from real girl scouts?"

Magrat Garlick from the Discworld books, especially in her early appearances, where the citizens of Lancre had come to fear her self-righteous lectures about how meat is bad for your health and how anything natural is good for you.

Lords and Ladies mitigates this somewhat, however—Magrat's cottage has traditionally housed thoughtful witches who carefully researched things and wanted to know, for example, when a spell calls for eye of newt, does left or right make a difference? Granny is a better witch because she knows it doesn't matter, but she nonetheless goes to Magrat for help when someone is poisoned because she knows that Magrat's beliefs do make her a better doctor.

Brief Interviews with Hideous Men: One of David Foster Wallace's short stories involved a man relating the story of a hook-up with a "granola cruncher" that turned into a most peculiar tale about her managing to get a rapist to not rape her in a truly bizarre manner.

American Gods: Samantha Black Crow delivers a beautiful speech of all the (sometimes contradictory) things she believes in, which could well be a summary of the beliefs of many of these characters. In a subversion, this is a universe where all this might well be true, at the same time.

Nola, Phoebe's hippy friend in Oh. My. Gods. Nola is actually a nickname for her name, which is Granola.

Signe Havel of the Emberverse starts out as one of these, but the attitude doesn't survive the collapse of civilization, or more specifically, her encounter with bandit rapists.

John Martin, of Island in the Sea of Time and sequels, is a Granola Guy whose idealism survives even a one-way trip to the Bronze Age and his captivity by an American officer turned barbarian warlord.

Allie's mother in Margaret Ball's Lost in Translation, who's heavily into yoga, astral travel, channeling and such and believes that Allie shouldn't seek temporary employment at the Steak Shoppe because it's full of "red meat and death vibrations."

Mokey in Fraggle Rock. If she were human, you could easily picture her listening to sitar music and polishing crystals.

Boy Meets World: Topanga in the first season. She was intended as a one-shot character, but the actress made such an impression that she was invited back as a regular. The novelty wore thin pretty quickly, so when the show re-tooled in the second season, they changed her into a Girl Next Door. Her change is explained in universe as just growing out of it as it's brought up in a later episode complete with Topanga mimicking an earlier incident of smearing lipstick over her face.

Phoebe from Friends. Slightly less so in later seasons when she ended up a little less hippy and a little more edgy.

The Wonder Years: The trope is played straight — the series is set in the late 1960s.

Amy Jellicoe in Enlightened, although her sincerity is sometimes questioned.

The Monkees: Peter Tork (on the TV show and in real life) was more of a Granola Guy rather than a New-Age Retro Hippie (although he displays many of these characteristics as well. See also: Erudite Stoner.). He was undoubtedly the peace-loving “hippie” of the group, donning groovy 60's fashion (moccasins, beads, henna, flowers), and very openly displaying his dislike of violence onscreen.

Which may explain why he was cast as Topanga’s father Jedidiah in early episodes of Boy Meets World.

Mr. Fellows, the English teacher from The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. He seemed desperate to prove to Will that he was totally down with having a black student by doing things like casually mentioning how much he loved Glory , or stating how we need to "fix" the South.

A male example from The Millers, Adam was raised on a commune, that had a cultish leader, by a mother who apparently really got aroundnote according to Adam, his getting a new half-sibling was almost an annual event. He and Debbie own a yoga studio with an attached vegan cafe, although they themselves are vegetarians. Adam even had pigtails when the Millers first met him, although Carol forced him to cut them off before he could marry Debbie.

Blair's mother Naomi in The Sentinel fits this. She clears away bad energy with burning sage (much to Jim's annoyance), rearranges Jim's furniture because of bad feng shui (much to Jim's annoyance) and believes in psychics (much to Jim's annoyance). She is vegetarian and such a believer in free love that there are several "candidates" who might be Blair's father.

Blair has inherited some of the granola characteristics. He drinks algae shakes for breakfast, recommends folk remedies from around the world whenever someone is ill, and has an open mind on everything from spirit animals to ghosts. He also doesn't like guns, but that doesn't stop him holding his own in later episodes.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer featured the literally short-lived Principal Flutie as another male version of the trope. After some possessed students ate him (he finally found the gumption to threaten them with detention just before dying), he was replaced by the better-known Principal Snyder, who utters the immortal, 'That's the kind of woolly-headed liberal thinking that leads to being eaten,' (as opposed to what eventually happens to him).

Flutie's immediate characterization paints him as aspiring to this archetype rather than succeeding in it. He wants to give Buffy a fresh start, tears up her transcript, and then, horrified, tapes it back together after glancing over the specifics, and tells Buffy the kids know they can call him by his first name but then adds, "but they don't." He was a nice guy though, a sort of hypocritical but well-meaning Reasonable Authority Figure, as opposed to Snyder who openly has it in for Buffy from day one.

Dollhouse: Caroline of is a fine example of the trope. Her heart is arguably in the right place, but her pushy attitude and reckless lack of planning result in her boyfriend's death as well as the maiming of her friend's arm. One gets the impression that she's intended to come across as far more sympathetic than she actually does.

Leo from That '70s Show could be an example of this because he's an older hippy stoner who refuses to grow up, although the fact that the show is set in the 70's makes this a moot point. Though it helps that this character is played by Tommy Chong!

The O.C.: Che, Summer's uni friend from the fourth season. And, to a lesser extent, Summer herself at times.

Ted's high school/sometimes college girlfriend Karen was a particularly insufferable example. Obsessed with wine and healthy food, bashing pop culture and pretty much everything, and a chronic cheater.

Jane on Coupling is one, although some positions she claims to have are not completely true (her supposed lesbianism and vegetarianism).

Hannah Montana: Sarah, who once went to work in Rico's snack shack and ended up getting rid of paper plates and cups under the excuse that they would all asphyxiate if they didn't quit using them. While she's right, it is kind of extreme.

True Blood: For the extreme version of this trope, there's Amy Burley. She may kidnap and torture vampires for a high, but it doesn't matter because being a Granola Girl makes her a good person, dammit.

Amy: (talking to kidnapped vampire) I am an organic vegan and my carbon footprint is miniscule.

Lindsay on Arrested Development tries to present herself as this at times, but utterly fails at it in practice as she is a Spoiled Brat at heart. Once to prove herself a real activist she joined a volunteer group to clean up the Wetlands. She ended up getting a taxi there because she didn't want to take the bus, skewered a frog with her trash spike, got lost, and "I think I maced a crane." She also claims to be against animal-skin, yet she wears ostrich skin boots which she justifies with ostriches not being cute enough animals.

The Thick of It: Stewart Pearson from is an example, and an unusual one in that he is neither an aging hippy nor a sympathetic character. He drinks herbal tea, cycles everywhere and is possibly far too PC for the centre-Right political party which employs him as a spin doctor. His colleagues generally find him irrational and irritating: MP Peter Mannion was less than impressed when Stewart made him install a wind turbine on the roof of his home. For PR purposes, naturally: underneath it all he's as ruthless as a spin doctor needs to be.

In Eureka, Jack Carter's sister Lexi is an excellent example, while Tess is a somewhat more low-key version.

In Project Runway season two, the designers were given an assignment to create a new look for each other. Santino said that he was going to make Kara Janx look like less of a "granola hippie".

Timothy of season 12 was a Granola Boy. He was committed to using earth-friendly fabric in everything, and in an overlap with Cloudcuckoolander, started talking about how we had to save the forests because the unicorns lived there. Sadly, he was eliminated early because he didn't exactly perform well under the Project Runway constraints.

Jerry from Raising the Bar is a fairly realistic example, played straight as an idealistic lawyer.

Lisa in Six Feet Under qualifies : " (Lisa) I don't go to the movies. Film is processed with gelatin. Gelatin comes from horses' hooves. (Claire) I didn't know that. (Lisa) Most people don't. Hence the global slavery of animals." She also ends up on her knees, trying to reason with mice to leave her house instead of using traps. Later, she's toned down a little, eating meat because "she needs the protein," but she still asks Nate to go to Whole Foods in just about every episode.

Captain Stottlemeyer's first wife in Monk. She even rants to her husband, a police captain!, about how she doesn't want him to carry a gun on duty.

Claire Howard of The Closer is definitely this. She eats nothing but vegan stuff and tried to feed it to her brother and Brenda. She is a intuitionist (psychic). And she had tried a ton of other stuff including yoga and soap making.

Dharma of Dharma & Greg, along with her friend Jane. Dharma even has the added bonus of having parents (especially her father) who are still stuck in the 60s.

Sarah from Jeopardy. David fits this trope as well as he is a bit of a nature nerd.

Tim Minchin's nine-minute beat poem "Storm" describes his encounter with and ensuing verbal smackdown of a Granola Girl called Storm.

Lloyd Cole's "So You'd Like To Save The World".

You might call it ultraviolet radiation ... It's only sunlight!

"Junk Food Junkie" ( written by Larry Groce) is about a Granola Guy who has some problems maintaining the lifestyle in private:

Well, at lunchtime you can always find me at the Whole Earth Vitamin Bar Just sucking on my plain white yogurt from my hand thrown pottery jar And sippin' a little hand-pressed cider, with a carrot stick for dessert And wiping my face in a natural way on the sleeve of my peasant shirt Oh, yeah Ah, but when that clock strikes midnight, and I'm all by myself I work that combination on my secret hideaway shelf And I pull out some Fritos corn chips, Dr Pepper, and an ole Moon Pie Then I sit back in glorious expectation of a genuine junk food high.

Neil Young acts like a very practical-minded version of this. In 1979, Devo actually christened him "Grandpa Granola". One of the founders of Farm Aid, he emphasizes the importance of eating locally and always has a big tent with organic vegetarian food. His book Waging Heavy Peace is subtitled "A Hippie Dream". One look at his website will tell you how seriously he takes this.

By all accounts, Bryan Danielson is a Real Life male example. WWE commentator Michael Cole has made many snide references to Bryan's veganism, while Bryan responded to Cole's remarks with a rant on WWE's image-obsessed hiring practices.

Brie Bella is a vegan (surprise surprise, she's married to Bryan Danielson). While this doesn't come into play in the ring, Total Divas uses it to heavily contrast with her sister Nikki - who is her complete opposite.

Taryn Terrell was a vegan around the time she was in WWE as 'Tiffany' but had to give it up - as she needed the meat for her power lifting.

Puppet Shows

Lavinia, Die Liewe Heksie, is a young witch in an idyllic elfland where flowers bloom everywhere, who manifests many of the classic character traits of the Granola Girl.

Monster High: has two Granola Girls. One is Draculaura who is a Vegetarian Vampire and the other is Venus Mc Flytrap a Plant Person. Venus may seem pushy in wanting others to protect the planet and prevent pollution, but her health relies on a healthy environment.

The Conduit: Talk radio host Autumn Wanderer, who thinks the game's alien invasion is due to a misunderstanding by the angry, male-dominated government.

A common character in Kingdom of Loathing. Despite their outspoken pacifism, hippies (male and female) are often enemies. Since they don't bathe, their attacks revolve around their body odor. NPC hippies are usually friendly, but out of their minds.

The elves from Dwarf Fortress. They live in forests, don't use metal, are "at peace with nature" (wild animals won't attack them), and are somehow able to get plenty of wood without chopping down trees. Taken to extremes in two ways:

They hate trees being chopped down. If you try to trade to an elven caravan anything made out of wood or anything derived from wood (like soap or clear glassnote the production of both require minerals which are purified from wood ash) it will offend the caravan master so much he'll immediately leave. In previous versions of the game visiting elven diplomats would demand that you'd set a yearly maximum quota for tree cutting. And when a world's history is being generated elven civilizations will go to war over human and dwarven civilizations cutting down too many trees.

If a sapient creature is already dead, the elves have no problem with eating the corpse, since just letting the corpse rot would be a waste of resources. This includes eating the corpses of human and dwarven soldiers they killed in the wars they started over tree cutting, which pisses off the humans and dwarves so much that the wars keep on going.

Homestar Runner: Marzipan whose "dirty hippie" quotient varies — although the Strong Bad Email coloring painted her as a frightening political-correctness freak. The Christmas 2010 'toon "A Decemberween Mackerel" suggests she may be farther on the self-righteous dark side of the trope than we realize:

Marzipan: At Decemberween time, it's our duty as people with more than one DVR to help those much, much, much, much, way very, very, very much, really smelly, a lot much less fortunate than us.

Narrator, quoting Storm: Pharmaceutical companies are the enemy! They promote drug dependency at the cost of the natural remedies that are all our bodies need! [...] I think it's time we took another turn to live with natural medical alternatives!

Monique of Sinfest fame is attempting to become one after an encounter with Barack Obama. Sadly for her she is Cursed with Awesome in that her own sex appeal tends to trip her up, putting her on the Devil's radar.

Megan of Elf Only Inn first appeared as the only person other than Jason to roleplay an elf character. Her interpretation of elves veered heavily into this trope. Then another of the chatroom's regulars met her in real life and found out she really WAS like that. Deconstructed in that she is also a control freak and an attention whore.

The character of The Nostalgia Chickdeconstructs this one. She's a misanthropic, uncaring Straw Feminist who talks about the environment and progressive causes, but would rather lie around in her house, drink beer and bitch about nostalgic crap. Played literally in one review where she can be seen munching on granola.

Macrobiotic, of the Whateley Universe. I mean, she gave herself the codename 'Macrobiotic', what more do you need?

Haley from American Dad! is usually a more cynical version. The trope can be played quite straight, too.

Mr. Van Driessen from Beavis And Butthead was a male example, nobly trying and failing to get the boys to read self-help books instead of just giving them detention.

On Birdz, Eddie's big sister, Steffy, is a staunch environmentalist. The first episode has her throwing paint on models wearing fuzzy caterpillar coats, and another has her boycotting a singer because he uses shampoo with the extract of an endangered plant (even though she had been begging to go to one of his concerts).

Sam from Danny Phantom, whom she's self-labeled herself as an "Ultra-Recyclo Vegetarian." though she also blends this with being a goth, or as she puts it Eco-Goth, so wears a lot more black than the average version.

Daria: Mr. O' Neill. He is an Expy of Mr. Van Driessen from Beavis And Butthead set in nominally the same universe and is only marginally more effective at reaching students.

Family Guy: Satirized mercilessly in the episode where Death is attracted to a girl who works at the pet store. When he finally asks her out, he discovers to his horror that she says inane things like "you can't hug a child with nuclear arms" and, well, he's The Grim Reaper, what do youthink he does? Followed by a Check, Please!.

Mission Hill: Posey. Often subverted for comedic value such as in "Kevin Vs. the SAT" (or "Nocturnal Admissions), in which she heals a semi-paralyzed pimp precisely so that he can fully feel the pain of landing after having been pushed off the roof.

"Make New Friends and Keep Discord" introduces Tree Hugger, who has dreadlocks, is a member of the Equestrian Society for the Preservation of Rare Creatures, is accompanied by sitar music, spends most of her screentime talking about auras and vibes, soothes a rampaging Smooze with "calming auditory therapy", generally acts like she's baked out of her gourd, and is named Tree Hugger.

Fluttershy herself is often depicted as a Granola Girl, especially in fanarts where she's drawn as a human.

O'Grady: Beth, as well as her mother. Subverted by her employer, Jazmine, who runs The Enchanted Soybean ("A Healthful Life Encounter!"). After returning from an illness to find a radically changed product line including soda and candy bars, she yells at Beth's friend Abby for "polluting" her store and promptly fires her. Ironically, just before the credits we see her locking the store and hiding in the back room so she can eat potato chips, diet cola, candy bars, and read gossip magazines.

Jenny from Phineas and Ferb. With a history of participating in various protests along with an inherent desire for world peace, she can be characterized by her hippie-like nature.

Didi from Rugrats would be this sometimes. Usually when cooking or when it put her at odds with Betty.

The Hex Girls from Scooby-Doo! and the Witch's Ghost are a rock band made up of three Perky GothGranola Girl's. They identify as "eco-goths" and love environmentalism. In future appearances in Scooby-Doo they don't reference their eco-goth ways despite one of their songs ("Earth, Wind, Fire, and Air") being all about how they love the environment.

South Park: An occasionally recurring character is the "Aging Hippy Liberal Douche". Wendy tends to fit this as of late, too.

Ilana from Sym-Bionic Titan has shades of this, particularly when talking about the unity of heart, body and mind or when she tries to campaign for better food at the high school.

Starfire from Teen Titans shows signs of this, though she's still getting used to our planet and doesn't really have the finer points down. She doesn't quite have the diet part down though; known for eating many a bizarre food, when they actually go to Tamaran she's shown to have the same level of table manners as the rest of her people (none) and much of their food appears to still be alive.

The girls of Totally Spies! show signs of this, but it is Mandy's mom who plays this trope straight.

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